Jasmine Restaurant Review: Trying not to eat the apple

Reviewing Jasmine Provincial Vietnamese Restaurant, I gave myself a parameter that I would try not to compare it to Tamarind Tree. It’s a little like Adam and Eve resisting the apple. It’s so easy, ripe, delicious, low hanging fruit. To use Tamarind Tree as a reference point when describing Jasmine would allow me to describe with out effort, but also with out poetry. Anyone can compare two like things, I am challenging myself to describe from the beginning. And it just isn’t fair–Tamarind Tree is one of the best restaurants in the city, and we want to compare just because it is also a Vietnamese restaurant. I like Nishino, but if someone opened a sushi restaurant near me, I wouldn’t write a review comparing it to Nishino. Ok, piece said. Here’s my take.

I first found Jasmine because I had forgotten that my much loved Lao-Thai restaurant, ViengThong, was closed on mondays, and the newly opened Jasmine was right next door. Recently, I returned to review it again for Restaurant Review 360. I had received and email from a fellow participant that she had a terrible experience there and would not be writing, and I panicked. Did I pick the wrong place? Aside from the ambience, I had rather enjoyed my meal there, but she had enjoyed the ambience and disliked the food. I was concerned, as I was bringing my family.

I shouldn’t have had a second thought. While the service seemed to lack a little professionalism, I appreciated that it appeared to be more out of naivety and sincere effort, as oppose to bad service from wanton apathy. Unfortunately they were out of ‘333′, the Vietnamese beer I had heard good things about, and offered us Tiger instead, a Singaporean beer which we declared the South East Asian Bud Light. From there on in things looked up. We started with a few appetizers, prawns on sugarcane sticks, baby clams with rice crackers (a favorite of mine, with just a hint of spice) and green mango salad. The green mango salad did have mangos, however they were fully ripe, not green, so they were a touch sweeter than they should be. Each dish came with its own distinct sauce, a peanut based one for the clams, a slightly sweet one for the mango, and I don’t know what the prawn one was, but it truly made the dish a much better one when dipped.

Our first two entrees had both had great flavor, thought they were a touch chewy. It was not enough that it made a difference to us, as they were delicious (”its pretty hard to screw up when you have this many dishes entitled “chile something”–mama gastrognome). That was the chile lemongrass beef and the chile garlic squid. I would definitely sit down to both of those again in a heart beat. But the true winner was the grilled eggplant, which were impressively good. Soft and melty on the inside, with a nice char on the outside, these were wonderful.

One thing I wanted to address was the portion size. These are quite small portions compared to the dishes you would order family style at many Thai or Chinese restaurants. For me, this is perfect, because the four of us were able to share a large number of dishes, but I would warn a big eater that they will need to order many things. Luckily you can keep ordering, the prices are not very high. For the four of us, including beers, it was $70 (before tip). Guys, my friends, that is very cheap. And very good.

The ambience is…odd. Some aspects are very fancy (piano in the corner), some are gaudy (stuffed green chairs on the raised level down the side) and some are downright strange (flat screen TV playing rotating images of art, some classic. Some not). 

Overall though, this is a delicious, cheap restaurant where you are served by heartfelt servers. The owner was walking around, inspecting details with the care in his eye that you can sense as a diner. It does make a difference.

ViengThong: Wow, its actually Thai…

“Wow, it’s actually Thai” was the recurring theme of our dinner last night. We headed out to ViengThong, on MLK Jr Way, just past the Loews. And by we, I include my brother, who spent three weeks at Muay Thai training camp in Thailand, and his friend who lived there for a time. These boys snottily laugh at the Thai food we eat here in Seattle, comparing it to the delicious stuff they got in their time living on the beach there. As I reminded my brother, I think he has told me about the sticky rice like fifty times.

They opened the menu and seemed pleased at the options. The waitress giggled when they thanked her for water in Thai. They ordered a bunch of stuff, not all of which I can remember. The soup was the first to arrive, and it is the best soup I have ever eaten. I am not always prone to hyperbole, but when Aaron, the guy who’d lived in Thailand (and who is slightly more prone to hyperbole than me) echoed this sentiment, I felt a little more comfortable. It was spicy enough to push you to the edge, without ever losing flavor nor feeling like flavor is sacrificed for heat. A hint of coconut milk was present, but it wasn’t overly creamy as so many tom kai gais are.  (or tom yum gai. which ever one has the coconut!).  Next up was som tum, the green papaya salad that is ever present in Thai cuisine. This got another round of favorable comparison to true Thai food, though with the stipulation that it was (thankfully) missing the fish sauce which “no sane american would get anywhere near”.

We shared a pile of main dishes, a decent green curry, a chicken dish that turned out not to be what the boys were hoping for. Then we had two stand out dishes. At the waitresses suggestion we ordered a plate of barbecue chicken. The flavor was perfect, the chicken, cut like they were ribs, was amazing. It melted away in your mouth. The other stand out dish was the steamed whole fish. In a thin brown soy based sauce, the fish fell apart on the fork. It was, I believe a sea bass. And it was, I believe, delicious.

We also ordered the Phad Lao, which was similar to a phad thai only far less sweet (always my biggest problem with pad thai). I enjoyed this, though it was much closer to dishes I had had before. Then of course, was the sticky rice. As I said last night, rice is one of my favorite foods, but I really enjoy food more when I can use my hands. Sticky rice has solved this probelm for me. It is meant to be eaten with the hands. And shovel it in is what I did. You can use it to pick up chunks of fish, sauces whatever. Similar to injera at an Ethiopian restaurant.

Everything we ordered was so far superior to dishes at any other Thai restaurant, it was a quite pleasant surprise. And all through the night the boys just kept echoing “Just like in Thailand!” and reminiscing about sticky rice from street carts and choose your own fish stalls on the beach.

Another great deal too: $100 with tax and tip for the six of us, beers included!

Dahlak

I remember as a child, we used to go for Ethiopian food a fair amount. Mostly this sticks in my head because it was the only time we were not yelled at for eating with our fingers (which I’m pretty sure we did, regardless of cuisine). So when my roommate demanded I try this Eritrean place, I embraced the opportunity to use the one utensil that makes all food taste better–the hands.

Despite being hidden behind the Oh Boy Oberto factory store on Ranier, we found the little hideaway fairly easily and were seated immediatley in the small room. A full bar was stocked behind us and the TV was showing Eritrean television (which included Soccer and pasta-making, as I recall).

We ordered a vegetarian platter and Kitfo. The vegetarian platter was similar to what I remember from previous East African food experiences, only larger. I huge platter made of Injera, the spongy buckwheat bread, was dotted with a variety of vegetable preperation, often stew like and involving lentils. Now, I have to say, my biggest pet peeve is when people tell me they don’t like Ethiopian food because they don’t like Injera. Now, I know if you eat Injera on its own it is very bitter and dry and no good at all. But it has NO flavor when you wrap it around lentil mixes and veggies. It is simply a great tool for eating the stews as well as becoming a soft, yummy texture with the moisture. So don’t try that complaint on me, people. Every dish on the veggie platter was rich and delicious. Unlike other places, I never started avoiding certain spots. By the end, all that was left of the injera platter was little dots of color indicating the type of dish that had been there.

The Kitfo, which my roommate ordered for us may be the closest food has ever come to sex for me. It is raw ground beef with hot butter and berebere (a spicy spice mix) poured over it. It is served with a soft, buttery, whipped cheese. So you use your injera to pick up some meat, dab some cheese on top and eat. It is a lovely squishy, rare steak texture to it, while the heat of the berebere is set off by the coolness of the cheese. Sublime.

The service was in general very good. They checked back with us often, making sure that we had enough injera. At the end, it took a while to get our check, but that was because our waitress was very involved with a coffee ceremony, which is an extremely complex procedure involving incense on the table and a lot of ritual. She was forgiven, as we were fascinated to watch this.